K-pop best of 2018: mid-year review

As usual the primary criteria for my selection is not whether the songs were groundbreaking or hits, but simply whether I played them a lot, chased the stages on the live shows and how much they got stuck in my head.  Sometimes, they are groundbreaking and top the charts as well (not very often). Everything from my previous recent releases post still stands, so I didn't include any of those songs again - except for one that is so is amazing I wanted to crap on a bit more about it (see below). Also I am still playing the hell out of ACE's Take Me Higher. [Please love them.]
A Spotify playlist of these songs is here.
There are more than 100 songs in my 2018 playlist; you can hear those that are on Spotify here.

Red Velvet: Bad Boy

RV took a great album - 2017's appropriately titled Perfect Velvet – repackaged it, and made it even better. Bad Boy was produced by SM Entertainment stalwarts the Stereotypes, who by now, would know exactly what the company wants for their young star girl group. Bad Boy replaces the quirky perk of Peekaboo, the album's first title track, for a sinister slink. Impeccably crafted and performed with lovely harmonies on the chorus, it's beautifully recorded as well. 

Highest chart position: (Gaon) No. 1

YouTube views: 116m

Kassy: I Want Love

Kassy haunted me last year with the appropriately named Dream, a gauzy affair, that would normally have been a bit too laidback for my tastes. I Want Love, released way back in January, offered no such dilemma, given it started with strings playing a tango rhythm (one of my weaknesses). They give way to a brisk beat backing Kassy's mournful melody and a wispy woodwind instrument. The violin returns to wrap itself around the melodies and rhythms. Kassy, who was in Unpretty Rap Star, raps the chorus so well that on the first stages, I looked around to see who was doing that part.
Highest chart position: [unknown]
YouTube views: 226,000

BoA: One Shot Two Shot

La reina returned and gave us an almost flawless EP - her first Korean one in her 18 years in the biz. It was packed with great songs, including the leftfield track Your Song, with rapper Junoflo, but the title cut is pretty hard to beat. Synths that ripple and slice, pulsing bass and BoA's voice dancing lightly over it all: "one shot, two shot, just for fun". So much fun. 

Highest chart position: (Gaon) No. 93

YouTube views: 8.3m

Momoland: Bboom Bboom

I don't think anyone expected the breakout hit of the year to bob up on January 3. And if you'd put a bet on it coming from Momoland, you probably would have reaped some tidy winnings. At a time when so many groups are legging it to the trop house/dancehall bandwagon it's a relief to see there is still an appetite for a certified bop with iconic choreo sung by girls in tutus.
Highest chart position: (Gaon) No. 2
Youtube views: 193m

Heize: Jenga

What a monstrous talent Heize is. In a scene with a lot of talents she still shines. Like a lot of the indie-er guys in Korea, I think some of her mellower songs veer into wallpaper, but this jazzy track is astounding. The ascending chord progression with its blue notes on the chorus is its magnificent centrepiece. Either side, it ebbs into a sparser arrangement, making way for her glorious vocals.

Highest chart position: (Gaon) No. 3

YouTube views: 7m

Pentagon: Shine

These guys won a lot of new fans when they played Kcon in Australia last year. Pleased to say I was already on the bandwagon: they have some killer vocals, good dancers, have released some great songs and they really sealed the deal with the hilarious Gorilla choreo. This song was a slow burner for some, finally winding up in Billboard's World Singles Top 10. It's one of those great tracks where all the instruments do double duty as percussive elements: the piano, strings - even the vocals. They make a polyrhythmic piece that ramps up the tension until it breaks down to a stop: then it ramps up again. It's a real little treasure.
Highest chart position: (Gaon) No. 27
YouTube views: 36m

Uni.T: No More

I didn't keep up with the talent comp The Unit when it aired, but the resulting girl group has some real stars, including a former member of the late lamented SPICA, soloist NC.A and DIA's Yebin. Their first song No More, a beautiful reggae track by producing legend Shinsadong Tiger (EXID) tragically flopped. The stages were just lovely, though daggers out for the choreographer for giving them an all-fours-on-the-floor section. Unnecessary.
Highest chart position: (Gaon) -
YouTube views: 1.6m

Yang Yoseob - Today/Where I Am Gone

Highlight's success post separation from Cube Entertainment has been highly gratifying, although I haven't always been thrilled with their releases. Uncharacteristically, I fell for a couple of songs from Yoseob's solo album. His voice is incredible, but I usually like songs with a bit more oomph. Both Today, and the title, Where I Am Gone, had such beautiful melodies and were so beautifully sung that they both seduced me. The former, sung entirely in a bewitching falsetto, is in the vein of a jazzy slow jam, so that's more in my wheelhouse. The single took a little longer to reel me in. But eventually, its charms made my heart flutter.
Highest chart position : (Gaon) No. 22
YouTube views: 1.3m

VAV: Spotlight

This boy group always piqued my interest without ever gaining solid traction until this year. Spotlight is a perfect pop song: falsettos rubbing up against descending basslines; great use of tension - full choruses that drop back to minimal verses; lovely vocal performances and most important - catchy af melodies. It's from Ryan Jhun who has written a ton of classic K-pop jams (the most recent of which is Taeyeon's Something New).
Highest chart position (Gaon): -
YouTube views: 243,000

Gfriend: Time for the Moon Night

Well hello ladies, congratulations on your first appearance on Kserá. It isn't the first time one of their songs has caught my attention - that honour goes to Fingertip, with its Stock-Aitken-Waterman-esque euro-pop sound. It was a departure from Glass Bead parts 1-6, and so is Time for the Moon Night, although this feels like more of a natural progression. Songwriting team No Joo-hwan and Lee Won-jong give them a gorgeous melody and a song that has some of the drama of the girl groups of the 60s.
Highest chart position (Gaon): No. 2
YouTube views: 32m

Wanna One: 11

With their contract almost up and a year's worth of disappointing songs behind them, someone in the A&R department finally got their shit together and gave the guys songs worthy of their talent. The Zico produced Kangaroo is a bit of a mess, in the same vein as Boomerang, and the rest of the tuneless and half-assed offerings they've been saddled with during their time as group. But the rest of this EP, which also features producing credits from Heize and Nell is all good. This Dynamic Duo cut, which features Park Jihoon, Bae Jinyoung and Lai Guanlin, is my pick. It's an attention grabber from the get-go, with weird twisting synths and finger snaps setting the tone for a slow jam that breaks into little speedy runs of percussion and rap. The vocals are honeyed and golden.  

Highest chart position (Gaon): 1 (EP)
YouTube views: No official video

Yubin: Lady

This is a pick from my last blogpost but I am not finished talking about how amazing it is. The lush production (which I adore) overshadows a lovely textured and agile vocal performance – the melody gives her the opportunity to swoop from throaty low notes, up through her bridge into a trilling head voice: "boy I don't cry". Yubin put on fantastic stages while promoting as well: after making a tentative start, it seemed that each became more fabulous than the last. She finished with spectacular performance on Inkigayo, in which she wore a white retro Bianca Jagger-style suit with a sequin boob tube. Sadly the only video of it I can find is geoblocked. 

Highest chart position (Gaon): -

YouTube views: 3.9m

Olivia Hye/Loona: Egoist

This is my Loona pick for the year (so far): love4eva by the xxyx was a bouncy diversion (what did Grimes contribute to that, exactly?) but I loved the moody ambience of this single, which was the debut for Olivia Hye. I kept waking up in the morning with fractions of the melody and hints of the synths swirling in my head. It's an electronic landscape made of textured layers; solid walls, floating wisps, echoes. There's a catchy melody in the chorus but otherwise, not a hook to be found. And yet it sticks. The B-side, Rosy, also goes into my Loona best of.

Highest chart position (Gaon): 11
YouTube views: 2.4m

HALO: OMG

Ah Halo. What cuties. They used to wear fluffy jumpers and sing retro bops like Feel So Good and, er, harder retro bops like While You Were Sleeping. Then they disappeared. They were gone so long, that when a group of slick looking dudes in suits turned up looking extra fine and singing an awesome funk jam I had no idea who they were. Seems they've been trying to break into Japan but meanwhile, the few people in Korea who knew who they were have likely forgotten they existed. This is also known as "the Nu'est dilemma or traps for greedy K-pop manager newbies". Hope we haven't heard the last of them. Meanwhile, we have this treasure.
Highest chart position: -
YouTube views: 800,000

Busters - Grapes

This five piece debuted last year. They apparently are the characters for an anime called Idol Ranger Powerbusters - hence the name. Their debut was OK, but Grapes is a disco slammer. It has so many great ingredients I barely know where to start: girly vocals; a shouted "kiss me, oh baby!", a beat that is part marching band, part disco (work that high hat!). But beneath these tropes there is serious craft: the bridge has the instruments drop out for layered vocals; all these layers persist: there's another breakdown, then it just keeps building basically, into an explosion of perfect pop joy.
Highest chart position: -

YouTube views: 52,000

EXID: Lady

I love them. You love them. They came back with an awesome new jack swing track and, in a rebuke to the Hani fancam that made them famous, they wore baggy af jeans for all their stages. What freakin legends. Ladies, please never change.
Highest chart position: (Gaon) 4
YouTube views: 10m

NCT/NCTU: Yestoday

Tough call between this and Touch. In the end I just played this one more. What a bloody ripper. More ambient beauty (are you seeing a theme? If I'm not dancing; I like to chill). It's reminiscent of Soul II Soul, PM Dawn, Mantronix or something I heard at the end of all night dance parties way back when, with muted horns and rippling synths. The rap kicks it along and the vocals are to die for.
Highest chart position: (Gaon) 2 (album)
YouTube views: 6m

NU'EST W: Deja Vu

All my babies are jumping on the tropical bandwagon. But where Shinee just went for a more or less straight trop take on I Want You; Nu'Est got luckier with this cut by BumZu. He's a talented dude who likes to put a twist on things - as he did with Seventeen's tango Fast Pace. This starts with dancehall rhythm and some of that standard noodley tropical Latin guitar preset, but just as I'm reaching for a daiquiri to drown my sorrows at the banality of it all, the kick drum starts pulsing on 4/4 and a roiling bass sweeps all aside, apart from angelic harmonies. These styles trade places, throughout the track and there's a lot of hymnal singing from the guys (Baekho is a standout – as usual). It's not as good as Overcome but it's still smart, creative, writing. And catchy af. I miss Minhyun.

Highest chart position: (Gaon) 5*

YouTube views: 2.6m
*Still charting

Taeyeon: Something New

What a flippin' beauty. I thought she might come back with one of those catchy if unremarkable big sky ballads that guarantees an all-kill on the charts.* Instead it's one of those songs that takes a bunch of familiar elements and combines them into something seductive and somehow ... well, new. 

The intro of fluted, processed vocals gives way to cocktail jazz piano counterbalanced by a grumbling subwoofer bass and a chorus that it is nothing but call and response. A bridge ratchets up the tension then –poof! – it's all over. And there's nothing to do but hit play again.

* That one is on the repackage

Highest chart position: (Gaon) 15

YouTube views: 27m

Special mention: Gugudan - The Boots

I started to write this up for the main story and then realised there wasn't much to the song except a snazzy chorus and the reason it had sucked me in was because Gugudan worked their lovely arses off on the live stages. The tragically under-rated girl group have been killing it since their fantastic pop-techno track Girl Like Me and with the Boots stages they really showed polish and charisma. 

Highest chart position: (Gaon) -

YouTube views: 5.6m

Sentimental entry: Jonghyun

No MV. My favourite songs had no MV and there weren't any live performances, for obvious reasons. Add the jazzy lullaby Sentimental to the list of songs I grew to love from his posthumously released album. It was hard to watch the Shinee comeback without wondering how it would have been different had he still been here. Over the three discs they released this year, it seems impossible he wouldn't have left a mark somehow. I am getting used to seeing them as a four-piece and good on Minho for giving singing his best shot.